The Nature of Viruses

The biosphere contains organisms that are, like ourselves, based upon cells. However, there are other forms of life around us. Among these are the viruses, defined as a cellular, obligate intracellular parasites.

I call them “acellular” because during their replication, they do not obey the cell theory. That is viruses do not arise from preexisting viruses by binary fission. I won’t go into the details of a viral replication cycle for the purposes of this course, except to tell you that the world of the viruses is quite a different place from our world. Read the rest of this entry »